We were alerted yesterday to the fact that Lunar Industries employee Sam Bell, may have been in the Denver area of the United States over the weekend, sightings had been confirmed in and around the Starfest Entertainment Convention 2011.

We’ve obviously been wondering what he’s been up to lately. Further investigations however have revealed that our search for Sam will continue, in the meantime we can let you know how the sighting came about in the first place, with the help of MOON fan, Charles Kline…

I’m a huge fan of Duncan Jones’ MOON.  If you haven’t seen it, you need to! It may not be the best movie ever, but it is the best recent sci fi movie that feels like classic sci fi.My idea for doing a Sam Bell Costume started off with me getting the “Wake me when it’s quitting time” t-shirt seen in the start of the film.

I got the shirt in the beginning of March and that’s when I decided it’d be cool to do Sam Bell for Denver’s Starfest 2011 in mid April. But the best Sam Bell costume is obviously the grey flight suit, so I decided to start putting one together.First, I set out to find the correct grey flight suit. I found that there are a ton of grey coveralls available all over the place, but none with the correct pockets and zippers.After a couple hours of online searching, I finally found a small image of what looked like the correct flight suit.  It turns out its a German Airforce flight suit.  I found an outdoor/surplus store in Germany that would ship to the US.

Next up was the shoes – the ones Sam wore were so unique looking.  They have a greyish suede on the toes that make them look like they are covered in lunar regolith (moon dust). After more exhaustive searching, I found that they are actually a kind of running/sports shoe that, you guessed it, is only sold in the UK.  So I shelled out for international shipping and ordered a pair. And while at it I figured I’d pick up the correct socks as well. 🙂

After my shoes arrived I decided it would be neat to re-create the opening scene of the movie! I jumped on the treadmill and asked my wife to film me running for a bit.  Then, I messed around with the Ken Burns effects and side swipe transitions in iMovie and had a neat little clip.

Next up was finding a complete set of patches.  I searched some well known patch stores online and found that only one store in the UK had all 7 patches.
That took care of the main patches, I still had to figure out how to do the large back patch.  After a few scaling tricks, I was able to figure out the exact size and started drawing it up in Illustrator.

When everything arrived from overseas, I got started sewing on the patches.

The final thing that would *complete* the costume was Sam Bell’s watch. Again, a very unique looking piece.  More searching…and I found it.

About half-way through piecing together the costume, I had a neat idea. I decided I would let my hair and beard grow out for Starfest and wear my “Wake me when it’s quitting time” costume on the first night of the Con. Then for the second day I would shave, get a hair cut and wear the flight suit.  It worked out great! My group of friends all got it and thought it was pretty awesome.

No one – not one single “sci fi fan” at the convention recognized it.  I was waiting for the person who might have seen me both days and ‘get it’..  oh well, it was still damn cool. And it provided the opportunity for this photo. 🙂 I call it “Will you shake my hand?”

And here are the photos from Starfest.

That it, Over and out. Rock n roll, God bless America.

A bit of an after story: So after the convention I took the flight suit to my local dry cleaners and the little old Korean lady who runs it was so excited about being able to read the word “love” on the back.  She said “This is Korean, I can read this, it say love!”

It was neat.

I think you’ll agree, that is stunning work there from Charles (presuming dry cleaners needed after hot sauce spillage after beans). That’s not the end of it though, as Charles plans to build copies of the Lunar Industries H3 Canisters, and Sam’s communicator, which you can see here, with Sam Rockwell’s original suit from MOON, housed at a secret location (Duncan Jones’ bedroom).

Thanks Charles, totally amazing. Please drop Charles a tweet if you enjoyed that, and are on Twitter, as he has just joined today, and if we ask nice, he might tell us where to get all the gear 🙂 *APPLAUSE*

UPDATE: For those that have asked, Charles has indeed supplied the Sam Bell shopping list 🙂